History
Since first deployed for the Octopus card scheme in Hong Kong in 1997, smart cards with contactless interfaces have been increasingly popular for payment and ticketing applications such as mass transit. Globally, contactless fare collection is being employed for efficiencies in public transit. The various standards emerging are local in focus and are not compatible, though the MIFARE Classic card from Philips has a large market share in the US and Europe.
In more recent times, Visa and MasterCard have agreed to standards for general "open loop" payments on their networks, with millions of cards deployed in the USA, UK, France and globally.
Smart cards are being introduced in personal identification and entitlement schemes at regional, national, and international levels. Citizen cards, drivers’ licenses, and patient card schemes are becoming more prevalent. In Malaysia, the compulsory national ID scheme MyKad includes 8 different applications and is rolled out for 18 million users. Contactless smart cards are being integrated into ICAO biometric passports to enhance security for international travel.
Read more about this topic: Contactless Smart Card
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“We aspire to be something more than stupid and timid chattels, pretending to read history and our Bibles, but desecrating every house and every day we breathe in.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“For a transitory enchanted moment man must have held his breath in the presence of this continent, compelled into an aesthetic contemplation he neither understood nor desired, face to face for the last time in history with something commensurate to his capacity for wonder.”
—F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896–1940)
“The history of medicine is the history of the unusual.”
—Robert M. Fresco, and Jack Arnold. Prof. Gerald Deemer (Leo G. Carroll)